The Postgraduate Forum Twitter Conference will be taking place from Tuesday 25 to Thursday 27 August.
What is the PGF Twitter Conference?
This conference is an opportunity for PhD students in geography and related disciplines to share their research with the wider geography community on Twitter.
The PGF recognise that many people will have been preparing materials for conferences that have now been postponed or cancelled, and so they decided to run this event in the absence of such conferences (for example, the RGS-IBG Annual International Conference). If you have work you’d like to share which you had planned to present at any conference, or indeed any new findings you’d like to share with the academic world, please consider applying to present!
How does it work?
Participants will be grouped into sessions with others carrying out research in a similar field. You’ll be given 15 minutes to share 5 tweets which showcase your work, and 15 minutes to respond to any comments in a ‘live’ Q&A. With just 280 characters per Tweet, you’ll need to think about creative ways of demonstrating your findings, for example by creating a short video or GIF to accompany your text. If your application is successful, you will be sent a detailed presenters’ guide to ensure you’re well prepared to share and discuss your research with as wide an audience as possible!
The following sessions will be sponsored and co-sponsored by the Social and Cultural Geography Research Group for the RGS-IBG annual conference 2020, 1st – 4th September.
Should you wish to submit an abstract for any of the sessions below, please contact the organisers directly.
Non-representational geographies: approaches, methods and practices
This session offers a space for discussion of existing and emerging research exploring non-representational geographies. Non-representational theories provide a springboard for exploring the affective geographies of a multitude of phenomena from ageing, to nationalism and geopolitics, to name but a few. Various approaches, methods and theoretical lineages reflect and infuse the diversity of non-representational geographies, bringing together a concern for how places, subjectivities and identities are enacted, felt and mediated. The session presents an opportunity to traverse and reconsider the ‘borders’ within social and cultural geography with respect to non-representational theories. It provides a space to take stock of the development of the non-representational and associated thinking within and between subdisciplines. As well as research drawing on the established corpus of non-representational research, we are particularly interested in recent and innovative engagements with non-representational theories.
Topics in this session might include, but are not limited to:
– How might those engaged with non-representational theories learn from other innovative frontiers within social and cultural geography and vice versa?
– What non-representational geographies are emerging within the subdisciplines of geography, the arts and wider social sciences?
– How has social and cultural geography sought to understand the ways in which places, subjectivities and identities are enacted, felt and mediated? How can this be furthered?
– How are different bodies part of the nature of affective places/non-representational geographies?
– How are/might scholars engage methodologically with non-representational theories?
We are interested in engaging with perspectives from academics at all career stages.
Navigating, disrupting and re-working the borders of multiple citizenships
In turbulent and precarious times, the
promise of national citizenship is desirable yet often elusive (Bhrabat, 2019).
This is particularly true for ‘non-citizens’, such as those seeking asylum
(Könönen, 2018) where limits on citizenship have violent consequences. However,
formal citizenship is also unstable, seen through enduring exclusions for those
who are nominally, but differentially, ‘included’ (Erel, Reynolds, &
Kaptani, 2018) and through the uneven space-times of citizenship ( Brexit, the
Hostile Environment and Windrush) (Wardle & Obermuller, 2019). Beyond
formal citizenship, there exists an array of ‘acts’ of citizenship that by-pass
or contest legal membership (Isin, 2008). Work on post-national identities
(Soysal, 2002), translocal activism (Nagel & Staeheli, 2008), everyday
multiculturalism (Clayton, 2009), emotional citizenry (Askins, 2016) and sonic
citizenship (McMahon, 2017) all highlight everyday relational practices that
re-constitute borders of belonging. However, questions remain regarding the
continued salience of the promise of formal citizenship and the ways in which
contestations might continue to be ‘managed’ (Darling, 2017). Here, we look to
address the tensions and ambivalences (Ikizoglu Erensu, 2016) between partial,
uneven and (non-)citizenship and acts of citizenship that are practiced in
relation to, in spite of and against the prevailing ‘institutional order’
(Aradau et al., 2010).
We welcome papers that address a wide
range of experiences including migration and asylum, but also other practices
of belonging for those whom formal national membership is tentative, uneven and
precarious. We hope to attract work from
a diverse range of theoretical and methodological perspectives that relate (but
not limited) to:
Plastics are on the agenda. In
different contexts, in different ways, plastics have rapidly emerged as central
to environmental debates, politics and behaviours, as well as to academic and
technical work across a range of disciplines. This session seeks to encourage
expansive, critical and creative approaches to plastics and their geographies.
It seeks to emphasise how an awareness of geographical processes – and
geographical analyses – might enable us to grapple with the synthetic, sticky,
slippery characteristics of plastics. Yet, since plastics constitute, challenge
and percolate through more-than-human systems, at different spatial scales, the
session will also engender debate about the kinds of inter- and
trans-disciplinary scholarship required to address ‘plastic geographies’.
Drawing on recent (particularly feminist, queer and critical race)
theorisations of and responses to plastics, we are particularly interested in
the ways in which we (as a species, but also with nonhuman others) are
“(en)plasticized” or bound by a “plastic contract” that will threaten and
differentiate life for many centuries to come (Ghosh, 2019: 277). Despite
attempts, especially in the Minority Global North, to divest plastics and
render them ‘elsewhere’, plastics are no longer ‘outside’: they constitute the
‘substrate of advanced capitalism’ (Davis, 2015: 348). From decolonising
perspectives perhaps plastics have never been ‘outside’ – made up of ancient
more-than-human-kin to be cared for, carefully (cf. Libroin and the CLEAR
Laboratory). Looking specifically at humans, we already know that the
pernicious effects of living or working with plastics, in particular times and
places, are patterned by (young) age, gender, race and class (Huang, 2017).
Thus, a greater attentiveness to the workings of plastics does not simply
require new forms of collaboration across disciplines but also new forms of
interdisciplinary critique and experimentation. Whilst not, ultimately,
assuming that all plastics are ‘bad’ (Libroin, 2015), this session nevertheless
seeks to draw together empirical, critical, experimental, applied (and more)
research that can respond to the machinations of plastic geographies.
Examples of topics to be covered within the
session:
Circulations
of plastic(s) through social, ecological, hydrological and technological
systems
Children’s
geographies and plastic childhoods
Household
geographies and flows of plastic(s) through everyday practices
Everyday
attachments to, aspirations about and/or nostalgia for, plastics
Material
geographical analysis of stocks and flows of plastics through everyday lives,
homes, communities, societies
The
role of plastic in food waste and food safety
Connections
to health and hygiene (eg., menstrual health, hospitals and healthcare, indoor
ecologies)
Interdisciplinary
work linking ‘polluting practices’ to water and sanitation systems
Analysis
linking cars and mobilities to plastic in aquatic systems
Links
to emerging research areas of ‘toxic geographies’
Indigenous
and anticolonial perspectives on plastics
Feminist
and intersectional perspectives on plastics
Political
and economic geographies (e.g., firms, commodities/commodification)
Multi-,
inter- and/or trans-disciplinary research invoking co-produced solutions
Examples
of research/policy praxis to invoke meaningful change
Critical
analyses of contemporary discourses about plastics, across geographical and
social contexts
Any
surprising, interesting, and evocative connecting themes we haven’t identified
This call for presentations is linked
to the Leverhulme funded ‘Plastic Childhoods’ led by Prof Peter Kraftl
(University of Birmingham) and the EPSRC funded RE3 (Rethinking Resources and
Recycling) ‘Plastic Hygiene’ workpackage led by Dr Alison Browne (University of
Manchester).
We particularly encourage Masters, PhD
and ECR students and researchers from diverse disciplinary backgrounds to
participate in the sessions.
References
Davis, H., 2015. Life & death in the Anthropocene: A short history
of plastic. Art in the anthropocene: Encounters among aesthetics, politics,
environments and epistemologies, pp.347-358.
Ghosh, R., 2019. Plastic Literature. University of Toronto Quarterly,
88(2), pp.277-291.
Huang, M.N., 2017. Ecologies of entanglement in the great pacific
garbage patch. Journal of Asian American Studies, 20(1),
pp.95-117.
Libroin, M. 2015. Redefining pollution and action: The matter of
plastics. Journal of Material Culture, 21(1),
87-110
From identity to identification: vernacularization of Asian borders
Dr. Po-Yi Hung, Associate Professor, National Taiwan University, poyihung@ntu.edu.tw
Dr. June Wang, Associate Professor, City University of Hong Kong, june.wang@cityu.edu.hk
Borders cannot be
reduced to “a singular focus on political borders and their related social
boundaries”, but a dynamic, “bounding processes involved in all types of
categorization (Jones, 2009: 184), which “metaphorically and physically shape
the ways we understand the world around us (Jones, 2010: 266).” The renewed
approach for border studies pushed scholars to re-orient attentions to the
non-state actors at the scale of people’s everyday lives (Jones and Johnson,
2014), or what Cooper et al (2004) call the “vernacularization of borders”.
The approach of
“vernacularization of borders” is of particular value to our understand of
Asian borders, where the everyday practices of bordering is shadowed by the
geopolitical tensions among countries and regions, from North Korea and South
Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, to China and
India. This session aims to relocate Asian borders in everyday identification,
investigating the process of articulating, negotiating, and re-defining
territorial identities that move across categories of ethnicity, religion,
citizenship, law, nationalism, gender, and indigeneity. How different human and
nonhuman actants, from tourists, farmers, dealers, smugglers, makers,
agricultural and medical materials, encounter to do the border work and in
return be shaped by meanings and effects of borders and bordering of the world.
Tentative topics
include:
Political, social, cultural, religious performance of
borders
Transborder communities, regional identity and
placemaking
Border governance and institutions
Identity politics, “United in Diversity” –
internal bordering of societies
national and regional identity,
References
Cooper, A., Perkins, C. and Rumford, C. 2014. “The vernacularization of borders.” In Jones, R. and Johnson, C. editors. Placing the Border in Everyday Life. Border Regions Series. Ashgate: Burlington. Pp. 15-32.
Jones R. and Johnson, C. 2016. “Border militarization and the re-articulation of sovereignty.” Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers. 41(2): 187-200.
Jones, R. 2009.“Categories, borders, and boundaries.” Progress in Human Geography. 33(2): 174-189.
Schaffter, M., Fall, J. and Debarbieux, B. 2009. “Unbounded boundary studies and collapsed categories: rethinking spatial objects. Progress in Human Geography. 34(2): 254-262.
Changing purposes and practices of the library as border
Dr Rianne van Melik, Radboud University Nijmegen, The Netherlands r.vanmelik@fm.ru.nl
Libraries are not merely information
infrastructures facilitating the exchange and formation of public opinion, but
also social infrastructures providing access to social networks and capital
(Aabø & Audunson, 2012). Therefore, Klinenberg (2018) defines them as
‘palaces for the people’, which have not become obsolete or irrelevant in the
current digitalised society. Instead, they are often neglected, starved for
resources and overburdened by visitors and activities. In response decreasing subsidies
and membership, the library landscape is constantly changing. Providing access
to books and information becomes seemingly less important, while the offer of ‘non-book-based services’ is growing including
creative and movement-based activities like yoga and fitness. Consequently,
a number of changing purposes and practices of the library can be observed. For
example, large public libraries in the Netherlands become new urban ‘hotspots’,
often part of multifunctional flagship projects. In contrast, smaller towns struggle with keeping their
libraries open. Solutions are sought in turning libraries into social and care
spaces. These examples show how libraries are literally opened up; from single-purpose,
‘closed’ systems characterised by books and silence to open spaces where social
and physical boundaries are not ordinarily expected. This session examines
libraries as inclusive spaces, characterised as borders rather than by
boundaries (Sennett, 2017). However, the encounter between different users of
library spaces can ignite both unexpected conversations and conflict.
We invite contributors to submit
abstracts on relevant themes, including, but not limited to:
Boundaries of libraries; libraries as borders
Libraries as care and community spaces
Libraries as catalyst of urban regeneration
Libraries as liminal spaces
Changing librarianship and library practices
Libraries as sites of inclusion and exclusion
If
you would like to participate, please send an abstract of between 200-250 words
to dr. Rianne van Melik, Radboud University Nijmegen, the Netherlands (r.vanmelik@fm.ru.nl) by 31st January 2020.
References
Aabø, S. & R.
Audunson (2012), Use of library space and the library as space. Library and Information Science Research,
34(2), 138-149.
Klinenberg, E.
(2018), Palaces for the People: How to Built a
More Equal and United Society. London: The Bodley Head.
Sennett, R. (2017), The Public Realm. Chapter 32 in: Hall, S. & R. Burdett (Eds.), The Sage Handbook for the 21st Century. London: Sage.
Legacies of austerity:
What, who, and when does it leave behind?
Over a decade
has passed since the 2008 financial crisis, but the socio-spatial consequences
of austerity still haunt contemporary spaces of everyday life. The narrative of
austerity shifted from austerity as crisis ‘measure’ to governing ‘ideology’.
What does this transformation mean for social, cultural and economic
geographies? How does this shift affect austerity’s spatial outcomes, reception
and resistance? Does austerity still hold as an explanatory factor or are we
facing poverty by other means? In two sessions, we examine how austerity’s
legacies settle in everyday life and shape everyday geographies.
In the first
session, creative output made by, with, and for groups living with austerity
explore its legacies. Accompanied by 5-minute talks, these forms of
co-production explore how austerity has taken root in everyday lives and
experiences.
During the
second session, 15-minute conference papers address the legacies of austerity,
including ‘austerity events’ and ‘austerity ideologies’. How did austerity
reassemble everyday life and transform social relations? This session invites
projects that assess austerity’s embedded legacies, now and into the future.
Together, these sessions explore how the legacies of austerity become embedded in the ‘new normal, and how the future is imagined in response to, or in spite of, these legacies.
We know that a plethora of
cross-cutting identities exist within our discipline, and that these may
present an opportunity to produce a more inclusive and representative
Geography, but they also present tensions at the individual and collective
levels.
Porous disciplinary borders facilitate
intellectual mobilities across, within, through and beyond geography. This
gains greater social and cultural significance when we consider who stays
within geography, and who leaves. Geography welcomes doctoral students from
diverse academic backgrounds, and simultaneously trains geographers who go on
to reside in alternative academic fields. Whilst this can lead to the kind of
inter/multi-disciplinarily working required to tackle complex global
challenges, it may inevitably affect individual academic identities. In
addition, sub-disciplinary branding is increasing within geography. As
issue-related branding becomes more commonplace (nuclear geographer, climate
change geographer), how is this creating fresh silos or hybridising our
academic identities?
What does it mean to be a geographer?
How do we relate to each other as geographers?
This session aims to explore
individual experiences of negotiating geography’s internal and external borders
as an academic through autoethnographic accounts. In doing so we particularly
aim to illuminate the stories of hidden, dispersed or unruly geographers within
the neoliberal academy.
